To ride dressage is to dance with your horse, equal partners in the delicate and sometimes difficult work of creating harmony and beauty.

Friday, January 6, 2017

A pretty good start, if I do say so myself!

After posting Wednesday that it was too cold to ride, I decided to "just do it." The outside temperature had gotten up to 30°, although by the time I got dressed in my wool knee socks, double-layer winter breeches, turtleneck, Polarfleece pullover, ski jacket, fleece headband, and winter paddock boots, the temperature had started to fall again. It was a good thing I made myself go to the barn, too, because Lance's water was frozen over. My mouthy mustang had managed to unplug his stock tank heater. :-/

When we went to the arena for a careful warm-up walk, I decided to try for a selfie – and Mr. Mouth continued his antics.

We then rode through the neighbors' to the gravel lane in the woods, largely protected from the biting wind. As always, I felt much better for getting out and riding than I would have if I'd stayed inside trying to stay warm, even though my face, hands, and thighs were pretty numb by the time we were done.

Today started out even colder, but without any wind. I managed to shoehorn in a short ride between cooking and cleaning this morning and picking up Brian this afternoon. That worked out well because vacuuming always warms me up, and once out, the sun actually had some warmth, too. I was comfortable without the turtleneck and just a windbreaker over my Polarfleece.

That makes three rides for the first week of the new year, in spite of the frigid weather and frozen footing, so yay, us!

3 comments:

Yesterday was brutal here, minus 4, today high winds, wind chill and 10 more inches of snow. I don't think I could even get the paddock gate open even if I wanted to ride and they don't. 4 plus feet of snow is way to deep to ride in.

The boys are fat and well coated. Those curls do keep them quite warm. Even on the coldest mornings they love to go out for a roll before breakfast. I'm amazed that the Nag Bags keep them nibbling for at least 15 hours out of the day. I'm sure it helps keep them warm through the coldest part of the night and early morning having such slow feeding.